Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairpserson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is in no hurry to unveil her vice presidential running mate, with the announcement possibly to be delayed until late October, Tsai campaign spokesperson Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) said yesterday.
The Tsai camp faces no pressure in making an announcement — highly anticipated by the media and DPP supporters — for a number of reasons, Hsu said. The momentum of the presidential race appears to have tipped in Tsai’s favor after her campaign released the party’s 10-year policy guidelines two weeks ago, putting President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who is seeking re-election in January’s presidential poll, on the defensive, she said.
The DPP will follow through on this success with another policy offensive next month, when Tsai is scheduled to release her policy white papers, Hsu said.
With Tsai also planning to make a nine-day trip to the US in the middle of next month, the DPP’s upcoming party anniversary and the postponed annual party congress, Tsai campaign officials want to ensure that announcing her running mate will be a “separate climax in the campaign,” Hsu said.
That means the Tsai campaign does not rule out making the announcement in October if it decides that is the best time, Hsu said.
Tsai has begun to hold discussions with prospective running mates from a short list, starting with her priority candidates, Hsu said, but “no deal has been made yet.”
“Regardless of speculation, Tsai will be the solitary and final decision-maker,” she said, adding that her office believed that Tsai would pick the best candidate for the campaign.
Hsu also discouraged the media from speculating that Tsai would choose former premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), who has reiterated that he has no intention of serving as anyone’s running mate.
“It is not fair [to Su] and it would hurt his feelings,” she said.
Earlier yesterday, DPP spokesperson Chuang Ruei-hsiung (莊瑞雄) denied a media report quoting former DPP legislator Kuo Cheng-liang (郭正亮) as saying that Su was the No. 1 pick among six possible candidates in a DPP public opinion poll conducted last month.
Chuang said the DPP has never conducted public opinion polls on who should be Tsai’s running mate.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching